


She Knows This

by sunsetroots



Series: We Can Wander [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episode: s04e06 The Doctor's Daughter, Gen, another one of clara's self-aware echoes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetroots/pseuds/sunsetroots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara's echoes are made to save the Doctor, but what if someone else does it first?</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Knows This

**Author's Note:**

> self-aware = she remembers her other lives/deaths so warning for a bit of remembered death and blood

Names don't really matter here, they're all just soldiers in a line, but Clara has _known_ hers from the moment she stepped from the progenation machine, the name echoing through her mind whenever her thoughts have a chance to turn introspective. 

Her name is Clara. She _knows_ this, she knows it like she knows the war, like she knows the smooth skin over the back of her wrist.

If she's honest with herself though, the name doesn't really feel like _hers -_ more like she's stolen it from someone more worthy, robbed it from someone else's very soul. She dismisses the feeling because she can't identify its source and she can't afford to get emotional about it when the war's still raging.

When it comes to name and rank assignations they give her 'Clara' and she wonders who else held this name on their tongue and in their hearts, and why it even matters to her, why she knew the bitter taste of it before they gave her it - _Clara Clara Clara Clara_ \- and  _why_ does it taste so bitter and cold and why does it  _burn_ in her mouth when she repeats it to affirm she's heard it, why does it leave her feeling queasy and alone?

Maybe everyone feels like this, maybe everyone knows before they’re given their assignation, maybe being told it is just a formality. Maybe it feels this wrong for everyone, maybe this is what a name is.

She decides that this must be the case and moves on.

Apart from this feeling of secondary-ness, of unease, she's born with the knowledge of how to fight in a war she doesn't fully understand. She knows nothing _about_ this war and nothing _but_ it and yet that's _okay_.

She tells herself this, she tells herself _it's okay_ because it's okay for everyone else therefore it must be for her. She tells herself she isn't curious and doesn't particularly believe _that_  either.

 

She's going to pick out a new weapon when she first sees The Outsiders – the man with the long coat and the two women with the clothes that aren’t right, that’re too clean and too bright and the three of them are so painfully _not from around here_ that she almost cringes.

Almost.

She is waved on before she sees what is made from them.

 

She sees her later, when guns are all around and she _sees_ the new blonde woman along with the creatures she's been fighting her whole life for the first time.

She only realises now that she's never actually seen one of the Hath before. They don't really _appear_ to be evil and she wonders why they're fighting them.

_Is_ there even a reason? She does not know this, her life has only been a day long after all.

She's sure she'll learn.

The Outsider man with the coat talks of a history that she can hardly believe but apparently it's _hers_ , it's _theirs,_ and then he declares that he's a Doctor and he's ending the war. As if that's enough, he smashes the Source and Clara watches as the glimmering brightness from the orb unfurls around them, bringing light down through the windows from the outside, bringing life to all around.

The blonde one with The Outsiders is shot and Clara feels an echo of pain in her chest, watches as the Doctor clutches at her corpse... 

_Jenny_. Her name is Jenny.

But as Clara watches, she thinks and she thinks and  _she knows this_ , she has seen this _before_ , dozens of times.

_Shots ring out and bodies drop dead, more lasers and shots fire through the dark and millions of her friends that she's never seen before are dying a thousand times over and Clara's dying too, dying over and over in hundreds of different lives, scratching at the blood pooling over her chest and -_

_She's smiling up at her long-dead lover as she dies of old age and -_

_His face, she knows his face but it's stretched and distorted, paler from the rot of death and yet he's talking to her, what was his body now encased in cold metal and -_

_A hand reaches across a pool of blood to grasp hers as they both die and the sky's burning above them and she can't breathe and -_

_A man's shot in front of her and she grasps his body as it falls and -_

_She watches as her best friend burns atop a bell tower, screaming till the end of his life and -_

_The same man with a younger face is writhing on the ground in agony and she's stepping into his life, into his history and -_

_She can't breathe and she's dying and everyone's dying, the stench of death is permeating everything, everywhere, everyone, everywhen..._

 

There are voices breaking through and one of The Outsiders is talking about the dead one and she realises that all of those grotesque details of lives she hasn't lived ran through her mind as she just _stood_ there, silent.

“...no regeneration...”

_Regeneration_? This sparks something else, something more, _again._ She knows _this_ too.

_She breathes, watches as a chin turns to eyebrows, as gold burns away injuries into wrinkles, sees thirteen different faces and the same man._

 

She sucks in a breath - she _knows_ this. She _does_. She knows this and she has to _save_ him.

But the Doctor's gone, all The Outsiders have gone, stepped into a blue box and vanished with a rough grind of engines... all except the blonde one. The dead one. Jenny.

The Source glitters above her and Clara smiles. _Not_ the dead one, not for much longer.

Clara couldn't save the Doctor this time, because Jenny did it for her, and he was gone.

But maybe she could save his daughter. 

 

She runs to the place where they were to lie the body, thoughts running through her mind of the Source - maybe if they find a way to manipulate it, harness its power, they could -

But Jenny has already gone, already risen and run.

There is a Hath in that room and Clara resists going for the gun that is not at it's holster. They do not need to fight any more, they are no longer soldiers, there is no war. 

The Doctor ended that with one simple movement. 

She smiles at the Hath and he nods to her before she leaves, runs to the shuttle, where a man is asking for Jenny to return through a comm system. He doesn’t notice Clara.

Jenny leaves and Clara is left alone in a place where there's been nothing but war. It's going to be hard - this place has known nothing but war and now there _is_ no war. What will take its place? _Peace_? Clara wants to laugh at the very idea.

But it's okay. Clara has only lived for a day, what does she know? There must be a _plan_ for this glorious new world that the Doctor's decided they should build.

She knows this though - the Doctor did not die this day, and neither did his daughter. They both lived.

But Clara had nothing to do with it, so she wonders why she was _put_ here. She was made to save the Doctor but she didn't _need_ to, so _why_ is she here? She breathes and pushes that feeling away.

Maybe everyone feels this guilt, this unease. Maybe everyone feels like they're split in a billion pieces, pulled towards a billion different lives, maybe everyone feels out of control, maybe everyone feels a need to take off off the ground and run, to save people and _help_ and live, maybe everyone feels like they're not enough as they are.

She decides this must be the case and she moves on. Maybe one day she'll be content. 

She knows there's a version of her - the _real_ her - that's out there travelling the stars with the Doctor of the future. She hopes that _that_ Clara remembers this, hopes that she can tell him of his daughter, of the fact that Jenny lives.

She hopes that, but she knows better. She remembers bits and pieces of that life and others and she cannot see anything more of Jenny.

There's nothing she can do about it though, trapped here as she is, so she breathes deeply and she pushes on and she helps set up this new world, helps build the trust between them all and she builds a life for _herself_ , makes friends and connections with the other beings and loves them fully, wonders if somewhere, on some other world, in some other time, there's another Clara's who's breathing through these memories and smiling as warmly as she is.

She hopes so.


End file.
